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Ars Technica

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Two lunar landers are on the way to the Moon after SpaceX’s double moonshot

Ars Technica
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SpaceX launches two commercial lunar landers on a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center .

The two robotic landers will reach the Moon in the next few months .

Firefly Aerospace and ispace are the first private companies to land a lunar lander on the Moon.

NASA established the CLPS program in 2018 to purchase rides to the Moon on commercial spacecraft.

NASA has now booked rides with five companies for scientific payloads.

SpaceX stacked the two landers inside the Falcon 9's payload fairing.

Firefly's Blue Ghost and ispace's Resilience landers will take different paths toward the Moon.

Blue Ghost's final descent to the Moon is tentatively scheduled for March 2 .

The ispace lander will deploy a "micro-rover" named Tenacious, developed by an ispace subsidiary in Luxembourg .